Philosopher of the Week

[Cain]

Since I was asked to upload it, the Cambridge Guide to Early Greek Philosophy can be found here http://mihd.net/xvyb3pl (28 MB)

[LMNO]

Too bad the allegory of the cave was connected to his political ideology?    I think we are all the product of the (self) analysis of our times though.  I think the allegory of the cave could be seen (this is how I first saw it) as a metaphor for Life.  When you start to look around & find yourself limited by your family, culture, government, your own thoughts about these things, etc.  What do you do?  You find yourself imprisoned (perhaps in some cave-like place?) with others.  You want to escape?  You do.  You find yourself outside the cave with others.  After much study, adventures, observations, experiences, etc. you find you are not free from the cave, but just outside its periphery.  You want to escape that too.  You do.  After much study, adventures, observations, experiences, etc. you find you are still not free.  You repeat the above steps.  & so on.  You could replace the metaphor of the cave with the metaphor of the prison, ie. you're not free but just outside in the prison yard, then after escaping the prison yard, you find yourself in the community existing right outside the prison walls & so on.   

It is impossible to NOT contradict yourself as you move through these escapes.  If you hold on to your pre-conceived notions about these things, you'll never get past them.  You will remain consistent though if that's what you want.  No one will accuse you of being inconsistent but you will not be able to escape.  It more depends upon what it is you desire to do.

Anyway, off on a tangent I guess.  The pursuit of freedom seems (to me) to be a solitary endeavor.  When you want to bring others along with you on your adventures (we are social creatures I think) is when the problems arise.  The allegory becomes political ideology.  The sacred stories or myths or philosophies become not a jumping board to freedom but an institutionalized or organized way to convince others to join you at a certain point in the road.  & to remain there.   

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.

Speech is the twin of my vision, it is unequal to measure itself, it provokes me forever, it says sarcastically, Walt you contain enough, why don't you let it out then?

I say that democracy can never prove itself beyond cavil, until it founds and luxuriantly grows its own forms of art, poems, schools, theology, displacing all that exists, or that has been produced anywhere in the past, under opposite influences.
-Walt Whitman

While this was a nice post Honey, your intepretation of The Cave has pretty much nothing to do with what Plato was talking about.

[Honey]

Hi There LMNO,

Ya got me there!  You are right.  I am not overly enthused with Plato.  I do like his allegory of the cave tho.  As an exercise or a thought experiment.  I also think it's interesting to consider his take on democracy eventually leading to tyranny.  In his lifetime, it appeared to go the other way.  In the last century, there are examples of democracy leading to tyranny.  The Republic, while very interesting to me, leaves me a little cold.  At the end, with the Myth of Er? much is left to the reader to decipher.  Which is not a bad thing in itself 'cuz it keeps people moving & wondering.

There is black & there is white & there are several hundred (or more) shades of grey in between.  The Myths seem to add color.

[Cain]

Pending computer recovery, I will restart this on Monday, with Aristotle.

[Requia ☣]

Woot, Aristotle I like.

[Iason Ouabache]

This link may be of interest to everyone in this thread:

Squashed Philosophers:  http://www.btinternet.com/~glynhughes/squashed/

[Cain]

Aristotle (Greek: Ἀριστοτέλης Aristotélēs) (384 BC – 322 BC) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology and zoology.

Together with Plato, and Socrates (Plato's teacher), Aristotle is one of the most important founding figures in Western philosophy. He was the first to create a comprehensive system of Western philosophy, encompassing morality and aesthetics, logic and science, politics and metaphysics. Aristotle's views on the physical sciences profoundly shaped medieval scholarship, and their influence extended well into the Renaissance, although they were ultimately replaced by modern physics. In the biological sciences, some of his observations were only confirmed to be accurate in the nineteenth century. His works contain the earliest known formal study of logic, which were incorporated in the late nineteenth century into modern formal logic. In metaphysics, Aristotelianism had a profound influence on philosophical and theological thinking in the Islamic and Jewish traditions in the Middle Ages, and it continues to influence Christian theology, especially Eastern Orthodox theology, and the scholastic tradition of the Roman Catholic Church. All aspects of Aristotle's philosophy continue to be the object of active academic study today.


Like his teacher Plato, Aristotle's philosophy aims at the universal. Aristotle, however, found the universal in particular things, which he called the essence of things, while Plato finds that the universal exists apart from particular things, and is related to them as their prototype or exemplar. For Aristotle, therefore, philosophic method implies the ascent from the study of particular phenomena to the knowledge of essences, while for Plato philosophic method means the descent from a knowledge of universal Forms (or ideas) to a contemplation of particular imitations of these. For Aristotle, "form" still refers to the unconditional basis of phenomena but is "instantiated" in a particular substance (see Universals and particulars, below). In a certain sense, Aristotle's method is both inductive and deductive, while Plato's is essentially deductive from a priori principles.

In Aristotle's terminology, "natural philosophy" is a branch of philosophy examining the phenomena of the natural world, and included fields that would be regarded today as physics, biology and other natural sciences. In modern times, the scope of philosophy has become limited to more generic or abstract inquiries, such as ethics and metaphysics, in which logic plays a major role. Today's philosophy tends to exclude empirical study of the natural world by means of the scientific method. In contrast, Aristotle's philosophical endeavors encompassed virtually all facets of intellectual inquiry.

In the larger sense of the word, Aristotle makes philosophy coextensive with reasoning, which he also would describe as "science". Note, however, that his use of the term science carries a different meaning than that covered by the term "scientific method". For Aristotle, "all science (dianoia) is either practical, poetical or theoretical" (Metaphysics 1025b25). By practical science, he means ethics and politics; by poetical science, he means the study of poetry and the other fine arts; by theoretical science, he means physics, mathematics and metaphysics.

If logic (or "analytics") is regarded as a study preliminary to philosophy, the divisions of Aristotelian philosophy would consist of: (1) Logic; (2) Theoretical Philosophy, including Metaphysics, Physics, Mathematics, (3) Practical Philosophy and (4) Poetical Philosophy.


Aristotle's predecessor, Plato, argued that all things have a universal form, which could be either a property, or a relation to other things. When we look at an apple, for example, we see an apple, and we can also analyze a form of an apple. In this distinction, there is a particular apple and a universal form of an apple. Moreover, we can place an apple next to a book, so that we can speak of both the book and apple as being next to each other.

Plato argued that there are some universal forms that are not a part of particular things. For example, it is possible that there is no particular good in existence, but "good" is still a proper universal form. Bertrand Russell is a contemporary philosopher that agreed with Plato on the existence of "uninstantiated universals".

Aristotle disagreed with Plato on this point, arguing that all universals are instantiated. Aristotle argued that there are no universals that are unattached to existing things. According to Aristotle, if a universal exists, either as a particular or a relation, then there must have been, must be currently, or must be in the future, something on which the universal can be predicated. Consequently, according to Aristotle, if it is not the case that some universal can be predicated to an object that exists at some period of time, then it does not exist.


Aristotle considered ethics to be a practical science, i.e., one mastered by doing rather than merely reasoning. Further, Aristotle believed that ethical knowledge is not certain knowledge (like metaphysics and epistemology) but is general knowledge. He wrote several treatises on ethics, including most notably, Nichomachean Ethics, in which he outlines what is commonly called virtue ethics.

Aristotle taught that virtue has to do with the proper function of a thing. An eye is only a good eye in so much as it can see, because the proper function of an eye is sight. Aristotle reasoned that man must have a function uncommon to anything else, and that this function must be an activity of the soul. Aristotle identified the best activity of the soul as eudaimonia: a happiness or joy that pervades the good life. Aristotle taught that to achieve the good life, one must live a balanced life and avoid excess. This balance, he taught, varies among different persons and situations, and exists as a golden mean between two vices - one an excess and one a deficiency.



In addition to his works on ethics, which address the individual, Aristotle addressed the city in his work titled Politics. Aristotle's conception of the city is very organic, and he is considered one of the first to conceive of the city in this manner. Aristotle considered the city to be a natural community. Moreover, he considered the city to be prior to the family which in turn is prior to the individual, i.e., last in the order of becoming, but first in the order of being . He is also famous for his statement that "man is by nature a political animal." Aristotle conceived of politics as being like an organism rather than like a machine, and as a collection of parts none of which can exist without the others.

It should be noted that the modern understanding of a political community is that of the state. However, the state was foreign to Aristotle. He referred to political communities as cities. Aristotle understood a city as a political "partnership" and not one of a social contract (or compact) or a political community as understood by Niccolò Machiavelli. Subsequently, a city is created not to avoid injustice or for economic stability , but rather to live a good life: "The political partnership must be regarded, therefore, as being for the sake of noble actions, not for the sake of living together" . This can be distinguished from the social contract theory which individuals leave the state of nature because of "fear of violent death" or its "inconveniences."


The philosopher novelist Ayn Rand commented that in writing Atlas Shrugged the only philosopher to whom she could acknowledge a debt was Aristotle.



Works of Aristotle online:

http://classics.mit.edu/Browse/index-Aristotle.html

[Cain]

Before entering upon a discussion of Aristotle's researches into the natural world, something must be said about the book in which he theorizes about scientific proof—the Posterior Analytics.

The book sets out a system of proof by syllogisms. We have scientific understanding of something, says Aristotle, 'when we believe we know the cause (the aitia)2 of the thing's being the case—know that it is the cause of it—and that it could not be otherwise' (1.2, 71b10–12). From premisses that are known to be true, the scientific theorist draws a conclusion that is then also known to be true because it follows necessarily from the premisses. If the argument is to qualify as part of a science (epistêmê), its premisses must have certain qualities: they must be 'true and primitive and immediate and more familiar than and prior to and explanatory of the conclusion' (1.2, 71b22–24, tr. Barnes).

Now when one turns to the treatises in which Aristotle sets out his philosophy of nature (the treatises listed above in section 1), it is at once obvious that they do not even attempt to meet these conditions. They are, in general, inquiries, or the records of inquiries, rather than proofs. They do not confine themselves to necessary truths, which cannot be otherwise.

In many cases, particularly in the biological works, they start from propositions based on observation. They do not proceed by syllogistic
proofs alone. It is clear that we are dealing with two different phases in the presentation of science, and it is important that this be recognized if the reader is not to be disappointed by the apparent difference between the ideal set out in the Analytics and the more dialectical nature of the other treatises. The Posterior Analytics are generally held to describe the way in which a completed science should ideally be presented; the treatises on the natural world present the inquiries or researches that are preliminary to the finished product. 'In a perfect Aristotelian world, the material gathered in the Corpus will be systematically presented; and the logical pattern will
follow the pattern of the Posterior Analytics' (Barnes [1.28], p. x).

It should be added that the pattern of the Analytics evidently suits the mathematical sciences rather than biology, and Aristotle would be in difficulties if he confined his biology to the knowledge that could satisfy exacting demands for necessary truths and syllogistic proof.

[...]

The general character of Aristotle's interpretation of the natural world is determined primarily by two theses: that the cosmos had no beginning and will have no end in time, and that it is a finite whole that exhausts the contents of the universe.

The first main point—that the cosmos is sempiternal—is argued in book 8 of the Physics. The first premiss is that there can be no time without change: change is necessary, if parts of time are to be distinguished from each other. But according to Aristotle's analysis of change, there can be no first change, and correspondingly no last change. It follows that both change and time are eternal (Physics 8.1). Further argument (in Physics 8. 6) shows that if change is to be eternal, there must be both something eternal that causes change (we shall return to this all-important being in section 7), and something eternal in which this change occurs. This latter being is the 'first heaven', the sphere of the fixed stars. Since the rest of the cosmos is determined in its essentials by the motions of the heavens, the
whole cosmic order is also eternal.

These claims (defended, of course, by arguments to which this bare summary does no justice) distinguish Aristotle from all major philosophers of the classical period, with the possible exception of Heraclitus.  Anaxagoras held that the cosmos emerged from a primitive mixture of all its contents; Empedocles that it grows from unity, passes through a period of plurality, and returns to unity, in repeating cycles; the Atomists argued for a plurality of cosmoi, each with a finite lifetime; Plato maintained that the single cosmos is indeed eternal, but he wrote (in the Timaeus) a description of its creation at a particular point in time, which Aristotle at least believed was to be taken literally; the Stoics returned to a cyclic theory.

The second of these claims—that the universe is finite—follows from a set of prior assumptions and arguments. In Physics book 4, Aristotle
argues that there can be no such thing as a vacuum anywhere in the universe, and hence that there cannot be an infinitely extended vacuum. What people mean when they talk about a vacuum or void, as Leucippus and Democritus did, is an empty place. But Aristotle produced arguments to show that there can be no such thing. The place of a thing is its container, or rather the inner boundaries of its container. According to our experience, when we try to empty a container, either the contents are replaced instantly by something else (usually air), or the container collapses upon itself. In either case we have no empty place. A place is always the place of something or other. It follows from this that there can be no void place within the cosmos, and it follows from Aristotle's theory of the motions of the elements (which we shall examine shortly) that there can be no place outside the cosmos, since all of the body in the universe is
concentrated in the cosmos

[Cain]

OK, so I neglected this, but I'm not the only one.

I'm considering where to go next with this.  Would you prefer that I continued in chronological order (to St Augustine of Hippo) or should I start drawing out philisophers at random, in order to spice it up somewhat?

[Cramulus]

my vote would be philosophers at random. I'm really not into the classics, christian philosophy, or platonicism (is that a word?). The newer philosophers (like, WWII and later) speak to me way more than those old cronies did.

[Cain]

Cool.

My only real concern in doing the earlier ones was that they often traced out the ideas that later philosophers built on (Nietzsche attacked Kant and Plato, Heidegger built on Nietzsche, the Frankfurt School built on Marx etc), but I suppose I can introduce those debates without in depth coverage of the person in question.

We shall see what the others say though.

[Cain]

Does no-one else at all have an opinion?

Because if I'm wasting my time with this shit, tell me.  I will happily shit-can this entire project if this is the sort of response I can expect from now on.  No skin off my nose.  Saves me more than a few hours of work.

[RunsWithScissors]

Actually, I've been pretty-well enjoying this thread. 

Reading it is probably the most educational thing I've done in over a week.  Philosophy is not something that I know much of anything about (unless you count Christian theology, which I know a great deal about), but I find it quite interesting.

[Cain]

Unfortunately it seems most people lack your and Cram's curiousity or willingness to continue.

Project shelved, due to lack of interest.

[Iason Ouabache]

Unfortunately it seems most people lack your and Cram's curiousity or willingness to continue.

Project shelved, due to lack of interest.

Dude, you've gotta learn to be more patient.  I'd be fine with you jumping ahead to other philosophers.  I never was that interested in the ancients.  I like modern philosophers like Nietzsche, Kierkagaard and Camus instead. 

That's why I've been tentative in this thread so far.  I have extremely limited philosophy education (one mid-mester class 8 years ago).  I found this thread very informative and have been ashamed that I didn't have much to add to the discussion.  I really hope you change your mind and don't abandon it so quickly.